


and half embraced

by Siria



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28514826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: Joe, Nicky, and learning to walk side by side.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 126





	and half embraced

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Cate](archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon) for betaing!

It was a few months after their first deaths—and their second, and third, and fourth. They'd found that they could neither kill one another nor leave one another. No matter how many times Yusuf had tried to get away from him, he would round a street corner or wake from sleep to find the Frank standing there, staring at him with that unnervingly pale gaze. In the end, it seemed, the only thing that Yusuf could do was to travel alongside him.

By unspoken agreement, they went north and east and further east still, away from the Sea of the Romans and everything that either of them knew. They followed a road that even amid the upheavals of war saw a steady stream of pilgrims and merchants. Bandits, too, and Yusuf knew that he and his unwilling companion must look much more like the latter than the former. His mother would surely exclaim in horror if she could see her first-born now. His beard had grown ragged and his clothing was stained and much-patched. Only his sword remained sharp and well-oiled.

Other travellers gave them a wide berth on the road and Yusuf couldn't blame them—appearance aside, he hardly knew what to think of himself anymore. Was he a jinn who had fooled himself for a while into thinking he was a man? Was he the hapless victim of some dark curse laid upon him by some business rival of his family's? Or was this a quirk of some unknowable fate?

As they walked, he asked these questions aloud, but his companion—for such the Frank was to him now—neither had the Arabic to understand what Yusuf was saying nor showed much curiosity about his monologues. The man kept his eyes on the horizon and walked with a steadfast, easy gait that Yusuf found admirable—or at least, such he told himself was the reason that he kept a watch on him out of the corner of his eye. After all, they seemed to have quietly and mutually agreed on a truce of sorts, for now, and hadn't killed one another in weeks. 

"Would that all wars could be ended so easily," Yusuf said, panting, as they were making their way up the side of a shallow valley. His companion looked over at him, but the expression in his green eyes was unreadable. Scree skittered beneath Yusuf's feet; he had to work to keep his footing.

Some evenings, they found a caravanserai to stop at and a pallet to share. Other evenings they slept out under the stars. In this, their journey was like many that Yusuf had undertaken before—although with fewer people or camels beside him. Yet regardless of where he lay his head, Yusuf didn't know where they would be going the next day, nor had he any idea what would happen when they got there.

"What am I doing?" Yusuf asked the vault of the heavens one night. Their campfire had burned down to almost nothing and the moon was high in the sky, but sleep was still refusing to come.

Next to him, his companion muttered, in sleepy but intelligible Arabic, "Well, _I_ do not know."

That startled such a bark of laughter out of Yusuf that he clapped a hand over his own mouth in surprise. He drifted off to sleep shortly after.

After that night, it grew easier not just to walk side by side, but to learn how to match stride with one another. Now that Yusuf knew his companion had begun to pick up a little Arabic, he could start making halting attempts at conversation with him in earnest. That neither of them understood why they had died and lived and died and lived—that much was clear. Whether his companion understood any of Yusuf's lengthy digressions about jinns, and poetry, and the forty-day sojourn of the Prophet Isa in the desert, was less clear. 

What was certain, however, was that each had soon mastered the words in the other's tongue for stone, and sand, and sky, and water—and that was enough, for a beginning.

It had, perhaps, been a little more than forty days since they'd walked away from the walls of Jerusalem when they reached the banks of a broad, broad river. To see the stretch of green things growing either side of it and to hear the call of birds that soared above it was a pleasant thing indeed after so many days in the desert. So pleasant, indeed, that they both gave a great whoop of delight on seeing it, and without the need for any further discussion they stripped off their filthy, stiff clothing and waded into the river's cool waters. 

(Later, Yusuf would realise that they had reached the Euphrates—that they'd walked to the very eastern edge of the most far-away stories that his father had told him in his youth.)

"Oh, the things I would trade right now for a bar of soap," Yusuf said. 

His companion simply laughed and toppled back into the water with a great, arms-wide splash.

A proper ablution generally didn't involve washing your clothes at the same time as your flesh, but perhap, Yusuf hoped, Allah would see fit to overlook such a flaw this once from a maybe-jinn, maybe-cursed man whose feet were very sore. Yusuf set his clothes to dry on a patch of riverbank next to those of his companion. While their tunics steamed gently in the strengthening sunshine, they shared what food they had left in a meagre lunch, and Yusuf tried to decide if they should strike out north or south from here, because it was clear that this was not a river to be easily forded. 

When their clothes were dry and, if not quite something that would bring pride to an honest washerwoman, at least more wearable, they put them back on and got to their feet with a groan. 

"South," Yusuf decided, but before he could take a step, his companion cleared his throat and tapped at his chest. 

"I am called Niccolò ibn Giovanni, of Genoa."

"Ah." Yusuf blinked at him and returned the gesture. "I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib."

"Yes," Niccolò said. His Arabic was heavily accented, but he still managed to sound wryly amused. Yusuf found this less interesting than he did the small smile which played around the corners of Niccolò's mouth. Had he ever seen Niccolò smile? "You say this before."

"Ah," Yusuf said again.

And then Niccolò did something which Yusuf found quite astounding. 

He walked over to Yusuf and he hugged him. 

Yusuf was startled—at first because he expected to feel a blade bury itself deep in his gut, and then because of how nice it felt. Niccolò was warm and solid against him, his hands a wide and pleasant span against Yusuf's back. Yusuf found his face turning into the curve of Niccolò's neck, his arms closing around Niccolò's back. Yusuf's breath caught. What else did he have in store, this man whom Yusuf could neither kill nor walk away from?

After a while, Niccolò pulled back but he didn't pull away. This close to him, Yusuf couldn't fathom how anyone could ever think such eyes were _ʿāhāt_. He blinked. 

Niccolò took another step back, then, and said, "South? With you?"

"Yes," Yusuf said, and risked a smile, and they walked side by side towards whatever was next.


End file.
